Irene Mathyssen

[Strengthening Motor Vehicle Safety for Canadians Act, September 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, of course it is important to have the kinds of tools that will support consumers in their decisions and ability to access information. However, I would also suggest that the Liberal government needs to put its money where its mouth is. The budget has been reduced to Transport Canada for the kind of work all of us have been talking about.

Why on earth would we be happy with a government that does not see fit to ensure that the very ministry in charge of automobile safety has the kind of resources and funding it needs to ensure that we, the consumers, are protected?

[Strengthening Motor Vehicle Safety for Canadians Act, September 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I would like to take a few moments and begin today by welcoming all the members of the House back to the Commons after the summer recess. I trust that we, on both sides of the House, have all had a good summer and are returning refreshed and invigorated, ready to continue the work bestowed upon us by our constituents.

There is much work to do toward creating a Canada where no one is left behind; where full access to universal and affordable housing, medicare, pharmacare, child care, and education are a reality; where communities are able to reconcile with our indigenous people, and that reconciliation amounts to more than just empty promises; and where assurance that promises for the issues that matter to Canadians, such as true electoral reform and environmental justice, are not forgotten.

The summer has been very productive for me in visiting with the people of London—Fanshawe. I had a chance to hear their concerns, communicate my renewed commitment to them, and celebrate our achievements as a community and as a country, while we were able to recognize that we still have much more to accomplish. I look forward to the session with renewed hope that we are able to work together to achieve progressive solutions for all. I am most eager to continue the work of New Democrats in the House for our goals of social justice, social democracy, fairness, and equity in all areas of life, which, quite logically, brings me to today's debate on Bill S-2. It is a bill that deals with motor vehicle safety.

Bill S-2 touches on issues that, while seemingly complex in the legislative language we use on the Hill, affect the lives of my constituents in real and substantive ways. In southwestern Ontario, London in particular, because of the lack of adequate federal investment in public transit infrastructure, notably rail, we are dependent on motor vehicles whether we like it or not. The Highway 401 corridor can be a death trap, especially in the winter. Without alternative means of travel, Canadians are forced to take the road in order to conduct the business of living from day-to-day.

It is distressing to me to note that motor vehicle safety is not mentioned in the mandate letter of the Minister of Transport. New Democrats see this as a real matter of concern, given that road accidents are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Canadians each year. The very least we can do at the federal level is enact binding legislation that protects the safety of our constituents as we transport ourselves and our loved ones to work, school, and play. This can be accomplished by reducing the risk of harm arising from motor vehicle manufacturing defects.

In 2017, motor vehicles have become moving computerized islands with Wi-Fi access, Bluetooth connection for communication while driving, enhanced voice recognition, and options for entertainment and even shopping while on the road. They offer safety modifications and driver assistance options programmed into the vehicle to make our drives easier, safer, and more pleasant. These are all good things, but as the member for Trois-Rivières pointed out yesterday, this advanced technology leaves the individual car owner unable to diagnose problems that are bound to occur or make repairs on her or his own. As motor vehicle owners, we are reliant on the systems and experts who understand these systems to ensure that everything is in working order when we hit the road. Our lives are quite literally in their hands.

While much of the automobile industry in Canada has been gutted by globalization and the absence of protection for the industry from this and preceding federal governments, southwestern Ontario remains the centre of automobile production in Canada. However, we do worry, because workers at CAMI local 88 in Ingersoll, Ontario are facing and fighting that precise situation. More than 400 jobs were lost this past spring, because GM moved a product line, the Terrain, to Mexico, and not a word from the government. Now, 2,800 CAMI workers and their families are striking to keep the plant open with the production of the Equinox, and still nothing from the government.

It is my sincere hope that we can enact federal incentives and protections to prevent more automobile manufacturing jobs from moving offshore, and even to restore the industry to the powerhouse it was and can be again.

While the industry remains active in my region, I believe it is vital to enact legislation that protects consumers, retailers, and manufacturers from the financial, emotional, legal, and personal life costs we all pay for when safety regulations are inadequate.

Among others, the legislation before us today grants ministerial power to order a recall and to require more information from automakers. The minister may order a vehicle manufacturer to carry out tests, analyses, or studies on materials in order to obtain information on the defects of a part or of a particular vehicle model. This provision could have avoided the situation with General Motors Corporation, where there was a time lag between the corporation's awareness of an ignition system defect in 2004 and the company's recall notice 10 years later in 2014. That was 10 deadly years. That kind of delay is completely unacceptable.

General Motors has admitted responsibility for 29 deaths linked to these defects, and claims are still outstanding for 150 others. General Motors started its initial investigation of the problem in 2004 and conducted several tests, analyses, and investigations, but Transport Canada was only informed of this problem on February 10, 2014, a full 10 years and far too many lives later. One life lost as a result of manufacturing defects is too many, particularly when the company knows about the defect.

Despite the efforts of Bill S-2 to enhance motor vehicle safety for Canadians, the Auditor General of Canada's most recent report drew attention to several cases of dysfunction in the division of Transport Canada responsible for motor vehicle safety oversight. The Auditor General concluded that the funding cutbacks to the department were harmful and degraded the quality of the information that informs the directorate's planning and regulatory decisions.

He also indicated that the department had ignored essential partners like consumers' associations, motor vehicle safety advocates, and police forces in the process to review motor vehicle safety regulations. Consequently, it is possible that motor vehicle manufacturers exercised a disproportionate influence on Transport Canada decisions.

The Auditor General also pointed out that the department had not used its own research on rear seat occupants to develop a standard to increase safety. Rear seat passengers have a greater probability of sustaining injuries in an accident. Many of them are children. Despite 15 years of investment in research, Transport Canada has still not identified new safety measures for rear seat occupants.

New Democrats are of course in favour of granting ministerial powers that serve to avoid the kind of tragedy we saw in the case of the GM ignition system recall, and we will be supporting the bill at second reading. We do, however, have concerns about the ability of the ministry to enforce such powers when the fact of the matter is the department's operating budget for crashworthiness testing has been slashed by 59% for 2016-17, dropping from $1.2 million to $492,000. It makes it difficult for me to applaud the Liberals, who have allowed a budget that should have been enhanced to be so drastically diminished. This leaves a deficit of over $700,000 in a budget that should be enhanced to ensure public safety.

New Democrats call upon the minister to cancel the budget cuts to his department in order to make sure that these new powers granted in the legislation will be backed up by adequate resources. In addition, we are calling for a limit on the minister's discretionary power to enter into agreements with companies in violation of the act. We want to see the minister properly consult all partners when proceeding with a regulatory amendment that affects the safety of Canadians, and we want the minister to effectively use the data produced by his own department in order to adopt standards that will protect the safety of Canadians.

I hope that when the bill goes to committee it will be improved so that our constituents are safe.

[Petitions, September 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I present e-petition 935, signed by almost 1,000 constituents from across the country. The petition asks the Government of Canada to support the NDP's Motion No. 65, which calls on the federal government to work with the provinces to cover the full cost of prescribed contraceptives.

[Veterans Affairs, September 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, veterans and their families are gathering on the Hill to demand action on mefloquine, an anti-malaria drug with potentially severe side effects.

CF members were ordered to take mefloquine as part of a botched drug trial, and the results have been tragic. Both Conservative and Liberal governments have long ignored the calls for an investigation, leaving veterans and their families suffering.

Will the minister finally do something right and initiate a study to determine the long-term neurotoxicity of mefloquine?

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 18th, 2017]

With regard to the Department of Veterans Affairs and Military Sexual Trauma incidents: (a) what is the specific policy used by the Department to determine whether injuries sustained from a Military Sexual Trauma incident or incidents are service related; (b) what is the documentation from medical experts or other professionals, as well as any other types of evidence, accepted or required to be provided to the Department to determine (i) if injuries sustained from a Military Sexual Trauma incident or incidents are service related, (ii) if the Military Sexual trauma incident or incidents occurred?

[Petitions, September 18th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the second petition has to do with the Thames River. As members know, the Thames is a magnificent heritage river that runs through the city of London. The Conservative government of the past stripped environmental regulations that covered the navigable waters act and left the Thames, and many hundreds of other rivers, very vulnerable.

The Thames River is a unique place. Many species are abundant there. Unfortunately, we now know that the Liberal government has failed to reinstate environmental protection with respect to the navigable waters act. Therefore, the petitioners are calling upon the Government of Canada to support my private member's bill, Bill C-355, which commits the government to prioritizing the protection of the Thames River by amending the Navigation Protection Act.

[Petitions, September 18th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first is in regard to the situation that has developed at Local 88 of Unifor. Unfortunately, the GM CAMI production workers have been forced to go on strike, because General Motors moved production of the GMC Terrain, a vehicle that was produced at GM CAMI, to Mexico. Now there is great concern that General Motors will move the Equinox to Mexico. That will mean that in addition to the 625 people who lost their jobs in the spring, another 2,800 jobs will be gone. That will affect a lot of families. Therefore, the petitioners are asking that the government act and engage all stakeholders to finally develop a focused, consistent, and effective national auto strategy that will include better integration between federal and provincial investments, ensure that Canada's investment incentives are competitive, and reverse the automotive trade deficit with all countries, including Mexico.

[Veterans Affairs, June 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, deaths from suicide devastate our community. There are too many unanswered questions regarding why so many veterans turn to self-harm. Mr. Lionel Desmond not only ended his own life but also the lives of his daughter, his partner, and his mother. This terrible tragedy needs to be examined. Will the minister take responsibility and call an inquiry into the triple murder-suicide of Lionel Desmond, to shed some light and find a remedy for our veterans who are suffering?

[Business of Supply, June 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly happy to stand in this House in support of the NDP motion put forward by the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley on the appointment of parliamentary officers.

The Liberals campaigned on, and continue to promise, an open and transparent government. As the Prime Minister has said, and has stated on the Liberal website, “Liberals will shed new light on the government and ensure that it is focused on the people it is meant to serve: Canadians.”

Canadians put their hope for social democracy in the current Prime Minister. It was he who called on Canadians to step up and pitch in, to get involved in the public life of this country, and to know that a positive, optimistic, hopeful vision of public life is not a naive dream; it can be a powerful force for change.

What he appears to have left out is the truth we have seen come into play in the events of the last few weeks with his unilateral appointment of Madeleine Meilleur as the Commissioner of Official Languages: that a powerful, optimistic, and hopeful vision of public life is possible only if one has demonstrated too much partisanship to be appointed as a senator and has made sufficient donations to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Thus far, the Prime Minister has exposed the singular cynicism of his election night speech with his action, or more accurately his inaction, on key portfolio promises. He has backtracked on his promise to protect the environment. He has yet to restore protections for our navigable waters in response to destructive legislation by the previous Conservative government that gutted the important environmental laws that protected water. The Prime Minister has refused to recognize the devastating effects of colonialism and continues to underfund first nation education. He pays ineffectual lip service to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He continues to challenge veterans in court. He has executed a blatant about-face on the promise of electoral reform. Most recently, he has spearheaded a half-hearted attempt to address the child care crisis in this country by allotting funds for additional child care spaces at half the rate he has allowed for increased military spending. That is in an effort to appease Mr. Trump.

In light of the fiasco that occurred when the current Prime Minister attempted to sidestep the process and appoint Madeleine Meilleur as the next Commissioner of Official Languages on May 15, the motion the New Democrats are putting forward today is timely and relevant.

In the case of the appointment of the Commissioner of Official Languages, the Prime Minister was obligated to consult other leaders on the appointment. Instead, he sent a letter informing them of his decision. We have seen this type of autocratic dictatorial behaviour on the part of our Prime Minister before. When he backtracked on his promise that 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post election in Canada, it was not as a result of extensive consultation or implementing the will of the majority of Canadians consulted. Rather, it was the result of his dislike of the recommendations of the all-party committee for a system of proportional representation, as opposed to the Prime Minister's preferred system of ranked ballots. In effect, the Prime Minister felt free to override the will of the people for his own personal advantage and decided to take his ball and go home rather than engage in fair democratic play.

Of course, there was the cowardly manner in which the Prime Minister delivered his backtracking on electoral reform. He had rookie ministers deliver his message rather than step up to take the heat for his own decision.

The Commissioner of Official Languages is one of eight officers of Parliament. It is a non-partisan role mandated by the 1988 Official Languages Act. Madeleine Meilleur's nomination received criticism from New Democrats and Conservatives because of her ties to Ontario and federal Liberals. Neither New Democrats nor Conservatives were consulted on Meilleur's nomination.

On June 7, Ms. Meilleur withdrew her nomination for the Commissioner of Official Languages position, as it had become “the object of controversy.” We know that Ms. Meilleur had initially sought a Senate seat, but she said Monday she bowed out after she realized it would be impossible, given the government's new non-partisan, merit-based application process for the upper House. If Ms. Meilleur was too partisan for the Senate, she was most certainly too partisan to be appointed Commissioner of Official Languages.

My colleague from Windsor West, with whom I am going to split my time, may have some remarks in that regard.

The lack of consultation among parties for new commissioners raises questions about whether commissioners will be non-partisan and able to do their jobs. Having a committee on which no party has a majority to pre-approve nominations significantly increases the likelihood of non-partisan appointments.

I would like to highlight the historical importance of having people who are objective and non-partisan appointed to parliamentary office. Their work is to serve and inform Parliament, not government. Parliament is the representative and democratic House of governance. It remains while governments ebb and flow according to political trends. The deliberations of parliamentary appointees must be immune from the partisan leanings of governments.

Our motion calls for a parliamentary committee comprising members of all political parties to consider such appointments to ensure that the successful candidate is objective and non-partisan. I can give a concrete example from my tenure as an NDP government member of the provincial parliament in Ontario in 1994.

Our government was intent on ensuring that the Environmental Bill of Rights was implemented and respected across the province, and it set about appointing the province's first environmental commissioner. The selection committee comprised members from all parties, and deliberations on the appointment were lengthy. We were tasked with assigning the role to the right person, someone who would be objective. There were many names put forward, including an ex-NDP member of the provincial legislature. He did not get the appointment, much to the consternation of some New Democrats at the time.

The successful appointee, Eva Ligeti, turned out to be a strong voice for the environment. She was non-partisan and impartial. Her tenure as environmental commissioner survived the NDP government in Ontario and continued into the days of the Harris revolution, a period marked by draconian and austere measures that included a tax on the poor, on health care, on education, and on the environment. In her 1999 annual report to the Legislative Assembly, Ms. Ligeti warned of a public health crisis that would result from unacceptable levels of air pollution, a prediction we have come to realize was entirely founded, with the increased number of smog-alert days we now experience in Ontario.

Because Ms. Ligeti was objective, strong, and impartial in her role as environmental commissioner, she was able to stand up to the government of the day to defend the people of Ontario and the Environmental Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, because of her disfavour in speaking truth to power, Ms. Ligeti's tenure as environmental commissioner was not renewed after her initial appointment ended in 1999, and Mike Harris unilaterally terminated her from the post. Opposition members argued that the termination of the commissioner should have been a vote of the provincial legislature, but their objections were ignored.

The similarities between Mike Harris and our current Prime Minister in making unilateral and partisan decisions regarding the appointment of parliamentary officers should be quite evident. The Prime Minister might want to consider revising his party's messaging around sunny ways and “real change” to “It's my way or the highway.”

Parliamentary officers serve Parliament, the representative body of the Canadian people, and not governments, which can come and go. It is therefore imperative that officers be chosen by an impartial body from a pool of diverse and qualified candidates and that the selection committee comprise members who understand the role of a parliamentary officer.

The United Kingdom has a commission for public appointments, named by the Queen and independent from government and the civil service. The commissioner oversees the appointments and makes sure a set of criteria, which include fairness, impartiality, openness, transparency, and merit, is scrupulously followed. It seems to me that if this Prime Minister is so intent on revising the way we do business in this House to be more democratic and representative of Canadians, he should be doing more than just cherry-picking the elements that serve him politically, such as attending question period every Wednesday to answer every question. He should put some real, substantive thought into the consideration of changes, such as empowering the Speaker of the House to require the Prime Minister to actually answer the questions, as they do in the U.K.

Once again, New Democrats are offering the Prime Minister and his government the opportunity to do this right. We encourage him to support this motion today and to back our campaign and the Liberals' promises of effective change that will outlive their political tenure and serve Canadians well. It is what we were elected to do, and I, for one, will settle for nothing less.

[Government Appointments, June 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, after all the repetitious nonsense, can the Liberals now acknowledge that appointing a partisan commissioner, without real consultation, will result in unnecessary scandal and is a waste of Parliament's time?

After the embarrassing withdrawal of Madam Meilleur's nomination, will the Liberals work with us to make sure this never happens again? Will the Liberals do the right thing and commit today to a new process that ensures meaningful consultation before any officer of the House is nominated, yes or no?